Year 18, Day 186 - 7/5/26 - Movie #5,366 - SQC DOC BLOCK FILM #5
BEFORE: I'm back on docs about music performers for a few days - I did warn you that I'd be bouncing around quite a bit with the subject matter this year, because the chain came together very naturally JUST LIKE THIS and I'm hesitant to tear it apart, because the fear is that it may come together in a better organized fashion, but something will have to get dropped in the process because the linking won't be there. And this year I'm already cleaning up the booted films from last year, and I want to hit fifty, so unless there's a break in the chain, I'm trying to preserve the natural order.
This is a great opportunity to appreciate how all things, all people are connected in this great big occasionally beautiful world. For example, Clint Eastwood carries over today from "Sergio Leone: The Italian Who Invented America". What does Clint Eastwood have in common with Roberta Flack? It turns out Clint was making a thriller movie called "Play Misty for Me" and during production, he was driving his car and heard a song on the radio, and that was "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", and he loved it so much that he almost crashed his car, he just HAD to get it in the movie. They already had the song "Misty", but that song sucks, so he made some calls and got the Roberta Flack song and that ended up being huge for her career. It's all connected, man...
Speaking of that, I've started profiling all 50 U.S. states during my review of FIFTY docs, and up until now it's been very easy, just look at where the movie was filmed or where the band was formed and pick that state, all good. But it's about to get tougher - because looking at what's coming up, several films have a claim on states like New Jersey or California, and meanwhile I can't see any connections yet to states like Oklahoma or Wyoming. I'll keep looking, and I guess I'll match things up as best I can, but there are at least 15 films with no obvious connections to states and a LOT of doc subjects from Canada, it turns out. At some point I'll just have to assign the leftover, flyover states randomly. What I did was create a puzzle that I just can't solve, so now I have to cheat.
Tonight's choice is easy, though, since Roberta Flack was born in North Carolina, a state I've been to a lot since my sister and then my parents moved there. Her family moved to Virginia when she was five years old, but I need Virginia for another night, so let's "Get to Know" North Carolina as part of the Happy Birthday America program (I'm trying to get a grant, but it's probably too late.)
State Dance: Carolina shag (sounds like a euphemism for something else)
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Luther: Never Too Much" (Movie #5,088)
THE PLOT: Roberta Flack's place in music history was assured when she became the first artist to win back-to-back Grammy Awards for Record of the Year, with her songs "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and "Killing Me Softly With HIs Song".
AFTER: This documentary ran as part of the "American Masters" series on PBS, and I try to keep one eye on whatever they're running, because they do license a bunch of great docs about music and film stars that tend to fit right into my programming. The downside then, of course, is that there are sometimes TWO listings in the IMDB for the same exact film, a second one gets created when that doc becomes an episode of "American Masters" and I don't see why they have to change the title a bit and they can't just duplicate the IMDB listing that was already made. From the timeline, it seems like this film was released in 2022 and went nowhere, but then Ms. Flack died in early 2025 and suddenly PBS was very, very interested in it.
From what I can tell, Roberta Flack seemed like a very down-to-earth person, like success came maybe as a bit of a fluke, so it didn't change her much or give her "artist's brain", she made a lot of friends in the business and helped others coming up, like Peabo and Luther and Donny Hathaway. She was classically trained and she worked as a music teacher, and really, come on, music teachers are the best people except for the one who inspired "Whiplash".
It's also a big accomplishment to win a Grammy for Record of the Year ONCE, and she did that twice, in 1973 and 1974. Like everything came together and the stars aligned, having the right song written by the right songwriter and then sung by the right person to really hit big and become part of the culture. Twice. Like I remember when Paul Simon won that for "Graceland" and that was a year his music was EVERYWHERE - like you could not get away from it, that's a Record of the Year. (It's a confusing award, or I guess it was confusing to me then because "Graceland" was both the name of the single and the name of the album. I double-checked, this award goes to a single or album track.) But other winners are songs like "Beat It" or "Kiss From a Rose" or "Get Lucky" or "Rolling in the Deep", that's how big a song has to be.
I said before how everyone is connected, and that's because each person's life touches so many others, if you do it right. So Roberta Flack lived for years at the Dakota in NYC, and her next-door neighbors were John Lennon and Yoko Ono. They were friends, and Roberta was a comfort to Yoko after John died. Sean Lennon is interviewed her about his "Aunt Roberta" and I just saw Sean Lennon live at the theater a couple weeks ago, he produced a film that was in the Tribeca Festival. Way back in the day I worked on an early HD video starring Sean Lennon that was based on the art of M.C. Escher, but I did not get to meet him back then. I did, however, once see Yoko from a distance at a sound studio. I'm connected, man, everybody is connected.
They detail Roberta's first marriage here, it seems she was married twice but also divorced twice. There's no Luther Vandross-like revelation at the end here about her orientation, but if there had been, I wouldn't have been too surprised. She was a champion for gay rights and sang at a lot of gay bars early in her career. Perhaps I'm seeing something that's not there, but she did keep her private life very private, and I'm just saying there could have been a reason, not that it matters now. What's a little bit more weird is the fact that she had an alter ego named Rubina Flake, who sometimes received credits on her album. Umm, so which parts of Roberta manifested themselves as Rubina? This is another thing that I wish the doc could have explored a little more, but it might have made her appear a bit crazy. Sorry, neuro-divergent.
We do learn, however, the identity of the famous singer that "Killing Me Softly" was written about - the songwriter was Lori Lieberman, and she said in an interview here that she wrote the song about Don McLean, you know, the "American Pie" guy. There's apparently a whole controversy because her management team took credit for writing the song and she lost out on millions of dollars of royalties. She had a secret affair with one of her managers, so he might have just been trying to avoid her, it's tough to say - but why not give her the credit and money she's due if you don't want to draw attention to your affair with her? It makes no sense. To be fair, Roberta Flack did speed up the song a bit and play around with the chord structure, but who can tell what makes a hit record a hit record? Sometimes it's just the right singer at the right time.
Directed by Antonino D'Ambrosio
Also starring Bette Braxton, Peabo Bryson, Angela Davis, Bill Eaton, Jesse Jackson (last seen in "Luther: Never Too Much"), Valerie Simpson (ditto), Jason King (last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary"), Sean Lennon (last seen in "The U.S. vs. John Lennon"), Lori Lieberman, Emily Lordi, Steve Novosel, Ann Powers, Sonia Sanchez, James Whitmore, Buddy Williams,
with archive footage of Roberta Flack (also last seen in "Luther: Never Too Much"), India.Arie, Dan Aykroyd (last seen in "Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story"), John Belushi (ditto), Tony Bennett (last seen in "The 100th: Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden"), James Brown (also last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary"), Paul Simon (ditto), Bob Dylan (last seen in "The Beatles: In the Life"), Joel Dorn, Art Garfunkel (last seen in "Becoming Mike Nichols"), Donny Hathaway, Lauryn Hill (last seen in "Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit"), Martin Luther King Jr. (last seen in "Nickel Boys"), John Lennon (last seen in "Here"), Mildred Loving, Richard Loving, Bob Marley (last seen in "Nothing Compares"), Dean Martin (last seen in "Groucho & Cavett"), Les McCann, Gene McDaniels, Don McLean, Donna Mills (last seen in "Nope"), Yoko Ono (last seen in "Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print"), Maxi Priest, Diana Ross (last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Frank Sinatra (ditto), Luther Vandross (also last seen in "Luther: Never Too Much")
RATING: 6 out of 10 hours spent recording demos for Atlantic Records in 1968
